Manure Management

Learn About Horse Manure Management

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Reduce Your Horse Bedding and Disposal Costs

Efficient Manure Management is possible when you use our premium pine pellets and Swift Pick mini-flake shavings! Quit throwing your money into the manure pile - reduce your bedding consumption and disposal by up to 50% over traditional flake shavings and straw
with Guardian Horse Bedding.

Finding a good farrier, good hay, good horse bedding, and reducing your barn costs are at the top of the list. While we may not find you a good farrier, we can provide top-quality animal bedding and reduce your barn costs on both sides of the horse bedding coin.

Because you use so much less horse bedding when using Guardian Horse Bedding pellets or Swift Pick pine shavings, you can reduce your bedding costs by up to 50% over traditional flake shavings or straw.

Additionally, we will reduce your manure pile disposal by up to 50% as well. Whether you pay for manure removal or pay someone to spread it on your fields - with a disposal reduction of 30% to 50%, you will save even more!

Guardian Horse Bedding is specifically manufactured to reduce your bedding consumption and manure pile disposal. With many counties and states having passed or proposed legislation to reduce manure waste disposal, this issue is at the forefront of the concerns shared by horse facility owners.

Some of these proposals require reduction of disposal or herd within a period of a few years. None of us want to reduce our herd to satisfy government regulations, so let us reduce our disposal.

Easy Manure Management With Guardian Horse Bedding

The siftable particle of Guardian Horse Bedding products combined with the highly absorbent pine fiber will reduce the manure pile as well as your bedding consumption.

You will immediately see the change when you clean your first stall. Guardian Horse Bedding will sift so easily, you will not throw good bedding away with the manure. The urine will be absorbed quickly and will waste much less bedding. The wet spot will actually clump or pancake, much like a kitty litter. This means additional savings!

The manure pile will compost more efficiently as well. We'll default to the experts to explain this benefit. Please visit our friends at Price-Moon Enterprises on the O2 Compost website for more details.

While we can't provide a good hay source either (although many of our quality dealers throughout the country can), the space-saving bag of the Guardian Horse Bedding pine pellet will leave more room for hay in the barn.

Protecting the Horse, the Human, and the Environment

The following are excerpts from data posted by Peter Moon on www.o2compost.com:

Regarding Using Pellet Bedding
"Based on my observations, I believe that you will see a 40 to 60% reduction in the volume of waste materials generated and a similar reduction in the time required for this daily task.

"Many people initially object to the cost of the pellets when compared to shavings. However, do consider all of the factors involved, including fresh material storage, bedding installation, mucking, and handling and/or disposal of the manure and spent bedding.

"I fully anticipate that you will see significant savings with wood pellets when all of these factors are considered. And you will be producing a waste (i.e., resource) material that is ideal for aerated composting.

"I do a considerable amount of work with Washington State University, which is keenly interested in the fate of horse manure in urbanized areas, potential impacts to surface and groundwater, and benefits to the soil when these materials are composted and used as amendments for both food and ornamental crops."

WSU recently completed a series of laboratory tests involving raw and composted horse manure for situations involving both wood pellets and wood shavings. The results of this investigation are summarized in the following table:
Treatment Total C% Total N% C:N Moisture % Ammonium (mg/kg)
Raw Wood Pellets / Manure 42 1.3 32 69 4,235
Composted Pellets / Manure 26 1.5 17 40 97
Raw Wood Shavings / Manure 46 1 46 62 2,848
Composted Shavings / Manure 48 0.7 69 67 78
In the case of wood pellets / manure mix, the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio (C:N) of the finished product is below 20:1 and as such, the nutrients contained in the compost will be released to the soils and plants. In the case of shavings / manure mix, C:N is nearly 70:1 and in this case, nutrients will be drawn from the soil to continue the decomposition of the wood fraction. This is clearly disadvantageous in every regard.

It should be noted that in both cases, the compost tested was produced using the aerated status pile method, which induces air flow through the mix of materials to maintain aerobic conditions throughout the pile and enhance microbial activity.

By maintaining aerobic conditions, odors were controlled, pathogens and weed seed were destroyed, and the composting process was expedited. In both cases, the material was handled just twice: the first time to place the waste into the aerated bin or bay, and the second time to remove it again and load it out for final use.

Wood Pellets and Composting
It is important to understand that the materials going into the compost pile predetermine the quality of the compost that comes out of the pile.

Horse manure alone (i.e., no bedding) makes excellent compost, increases soil health and moisture holding capacity, and stimulates plant growth. Horse manure has the correct carbon-to-nitrogen balance (C:N), moisture content, and bulk density (i.e., porosity).

In the case of horse manure mixed with shavings, the initial compost mix has a very high percentage of carbon-based bedding material, and this does result in high carbon compost. This often results in nitrogen fixing in the soil, which can be detrimental to plant growth.

For this reason, high carbon compost is often used as a mulch (i.e., top dressing) and generally has a lower market value. Also, the lignin in the wood is very resistant to decomposition, leading to the expression, Shavings In Shavings Out.

With horse manure and wood pellet bedding, there is a significant reduction in volume of wood mixed with the manure and therefore, it is much closer to the ideal C:N ratio.

In addition, the wood particles that are in the waste are fine textured (i.e., have a very high surface area), thereby exposing more of the wood surface to the microbial (bacterial and fungal) activity. As a result, the rate of composting increases dramatically and the finished product quality is far superior to that of shavings-based compost.

We believe that this is a higher and better use of these materials and provides the horse owner / stable manager the possibility of decreasing expenses and creating a profit center for the farm. Please feel free to contact us with any additional questions. Se habla español.
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